


shine on the world

by thunderylee



Category: KAT-TUN (Band), U-KISS
Genre: Angst, Cannibalism, Canon Universe, M/M, Mental Illness, Post-Apocalypse, Unconventional Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-09
Updated: 2011-01-09
Packaged: 2019-01-30 08:28:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12649860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderylee/pseuds/thunderylee
Summary: It’s kind of ironic to think in terms of the world after what it’s become.





	shine on the world

**Author's Note:**

> reposted from agck. written for je_holiday 2010.

Only Kame would read a newspaper on the last train out of Tokyo.

Taguchi watches him with minimal interest, mostly because the dim glow of Kame’s cell phone display attracts his eyes and there’s nothing better to look at. Koki is asleep against the window, Nakamaru is about to fall asleep in his text book next to him, and the scattered other late-night commuters aren’t worth turning his head.

An outsider would think that Kame is some kind of worldly scholar, an admirable idol who keeps up on current events and the state of the world, but Taguchi knows better. Kame’s reading the sports section even though it’s not baseball season, because he’d heard a rumor about one of his favorite players earlier and didn’t have a chance to Google it on his phone before he’d had to make a mad dash to the underground station to make the last train home.

The train had been held up for a few minutes, pissing Kame off even more because he could have searched it before his signal went out, dammit, but an exiting passenger overheard him and offered his paper now that he was done with it. Taguchi had noticed Kame’s reddening cheeks as he thanked the stranger and deducted that it wasn’t from the winter cold.

Now the corners of the paper start to shake, calling Taguchi’s attention. It had already been read once, making the edges more worn than they would have been otherwise, but Taguchi’s instincts tell him that it’s due to something else. Train rides haven’t been this bumpy in a long time, which pricks at his anxiety because this isn’t right, something awful is going to happen, and he’s long overdue for his nighttime happy pill.

The last thing he experiences before the earth rocks is someone grabbing his arm, a huff of annoyance from Kame, and four heartbeats running rapid with his own.

*

The world is still when he wakes up, the air oddly humid and the sounds of heated arguments making his head pound worse.

Somehow, he had thought Heaven would be more comfortable.

“Taguchi!” someone hisses, and Taguchi cringes at Koki’s high pitch of relief. “Good, you’re okay. That’s all of us.”

“That is _not_ all of us,” Ueda says firmly, and everyone falls silent. “Twelve people out of the entire country is nowhere close to ‘all of us’.”

“I meant all of KAT-” Koki starts, then cuts himself off at what are undeniably three dirty looks. “The five of us are okay,” he amends. “Plus the seven of them.”

Curiously, Taguchi opens his eyes to see a giant hole at the end of the train car, which is slowly being pried open even bigger by a couple Korean men whom Taguchi has never seen before. “Hello,” he says politely. “Who are you?”

“They’re U-Kiss,” Kame grumbles. “Because it makes sense that two rival pop groups would survive the apocalypse.”

“The apocalypse?” Taguchi repeats. “How long was I asleep?”

“Awhile,” Nakamaru says softly. “The sun should be up now.”

“We don’t know yet if it’s the apocalypse,” the main Korean says in fluent Japanese, flashing them all a calming smile through the hole. “Just that nobody else on this train is alive.”

“The world is entirely too quiet,” Kame snaps. “There was an earthquake and a resulting tsunami that wiped out the whole country.”

“If there was a tsunami, we would be flooded down here,” the Korean points out. “The air is just saturated.”

“Water is evaporated into the air by excessive heat caused by the sun,” Nakamaru speaks up. “If the sun was strong enough, it could catch the tsunami before it touched land.”

“Can the sun be that strong?” Kame asks hopefully, looking to their oldest to support his argument against the Koreans.

Before Nakamaru can respond, a loud noise demands their attention as a large slab of the train wall crashes to the floor. What Taguchi assumes is all of U-Kiss crawls into their compartment, bowing their heads in proper greeting and closing the wall behind them.

Taguchi is glad for that, because looking at mangled bodies and the crushed end of the other train car isn’t very uplifting. He tries to move while the Koreans introduce themselves, names Taguchi will probably forget over his relief at being uninjured. Externally, anyway.

He wonders how long he’ll make it before he has to tell them his secret.

*

It takes two days for Koki and Kibum to dig through to the surface, but only because Nakamaru advised against it for the first day. Saturated air meant saturated earth, which could lead to an avalanche of mud that would crush their train car much like the others. Or something, Taguchi started to tune out their endless theories and speculation.

He was much too preoccupied trying to stay calm. Thankfully the Koreans had been stocking up on food for their hotel room and graciously offered to share with the others, which put them in Taguchi’s good graces. That doesn’t stop him from thinking that the food would last _longer_ with less mouths to feed, though.

Nakamaru makes Koki and Kibum wear the emergency air masks when they get close to the end, but they return with the masks hanging off of their faces and looking like they were caught in a downpour.

“It’s so humid,” Koki reports, “and there’s nothing. Piles of rubble and dead bodies everywhere, but no living things.”

After a few seconds of being enclosed with the two, Taguchi sniffs and realizes that the two explorers are drenched with their own sweat. “If it’s safe to breathe, we should go,” he says, struggling to control his voice. He doesn’t remember much, but claustrophobia was one thing that used to set him off.

If the others find anything strange about Taguchi’s demeanor, they don’t let on. Nakamaru pokes his head into the tunnel and declares the ground solid enough to hold, then starts picking people to go. Koki and Kibum are first, followed by a mixture of the remaining U-Kiss and KAT-TUN members until just Nakamaru and Taguchi are left.

Nakamaru pushes an air mask into Taguchi’s chest, pointedly, and Taguchi doesn’t argue as he puts it on. The steady flow of oxygen is relaxing, which makes it easier to look at Soohyun’s butt wiggle in front of him for the eternity it takes to crawl to the surface.

What he sees sends his anxiety into some kind of frozen shock. It’s just like Koki had said, the after-effects of collapsed buildings and a combination of human beings and animals who appear to have just dropped dead. Upon closer scrutiny, Taguchi notices surreal things like cars sunken halfway into the ground, a fresh layer of dirt coating most of this world instead of the usual concrete and blacktop.

And the air is really, really humid. Even with the mask, the sauna-like atmosphere stings his eyes and causes his body to break out into a full sweat. He feels gross and angry and scared out of his mind, losing his balance where he stands and clawing at the soggy earth instead of someone’s face before he passes out.

*

His stomach wakes him up, the constant bouncing giving him motion sickness as he realizes that he’s being carried on someone’s back. The scent isn’t familiar, but he recognizes the shirt to which he is clinging and mentally pushes Eli up to the top of his list of people to spare when he finally cracks.

This moment seems to be getting closer and closer with each twist of anxiety in his nerves. Taguchi doesn’t know for sure what it’s called, only that he’s had it since he was too young to remember what he did to get diagnosed. All he knows is that the most important thing in the _world_ is his medication, which keeps his mood lifted and usually makes him unbearably perky.

It’s kind of ironic to think in terms of the world after what it’s become. Judging by the placement of the sun in the sky, they’d been walking for quite a while, but the scenery looks the same.

“It’s going to be night soon,” Xander states the obvious. “We should look for shelter.”

Nakamaru swallows hard enough to be noticeable. “If my compass is accurate, we should be standing in the middle of Tokyo Bay right now.”

This makes everyone stop in their tracks, because there doesn’t appear to be any water for miles.

“What the fuck _happened_?” Koki whispers.

His question goes unanswered as Xander looks around. “There’s some remains over there,” he says, pointing toward the northern horizon. “Maybe it’s dry enough to build a shack or something.”

Nakamaru lifts his eyes to the sky, which has been overcast this entire time. “If the entire bay was evaporated, it’s only a matter of time before it rains back down.”

“But the world is still turning,” Ueda points out. “It would rain down somewhere else.”

“Japan is an island,” Kame argues. “We’ll just get the rain from some other body of water.”

“Maybe,” Kibum says hopefully, “maybe it will pass over us and we’ll just get the lakes and rivers from the mainland.”

“There’s no reason to worry about the future,” Ueda’s voice booms authoritatively, and Taguchi almost snorts at how true those words are. “All we can do is focus on right now, and right now we need a place to sleep. Let’s head in the direction Xander-kun pointed and see what we find.”

Nobody argues, and Taguchi thinks it’s best to pretend that he’s still asleep. As long as he doesn’t need to stir up his misplaced energy, he should be fine. He feels too worn out to do anything, anyway, even if he should probably tell someone soon. Honestly, he should have told someone the minute the only person who _did_ know departed the group, but in his defense, he hadn’t willingly told Jin, either.

A sharp pang pierces his heart at the thought of his ex-bandmate who has fallen victim to this natural disaster like everyone else, but it’s comforting because guilt and sadness are much better than the alternative.

*

The scratches in the dirt wall besides Kame’s makeshift bed say thirteen days since the initial earthquake/tsunami/whatever it was that reset the world, but it feels like several thousand eternities. For lack of anything better to do, Xander and Kibum had been teaching the others both Japanese and Korean for easier communication, which helped to pass the time. Kame learned that Dongho likes baseball and instantly bonded with the youngest of the group, even though the concept of baseball doesn’t exist anymore.

As Taguchi watches them, he thinks that this is the worst possible selection of human beings to start the new world. There are no women, for one thing, which means no method of reproduction and continuing the human race. What is the point of working hard to rebuild the country if it’s going to end with them?

The Koreans are strangely optimistic, even though they’re about at the end of their resources. The daily food rations are pretty small, but Koki and Xander came back from exploring one day with armfuls of raw meat and nobody questioned what it had originally been. It satisfied one of Taguchi’s violent urges and he insisted on going on the next ‘hunting’ trip, along with igniting the fire to cook it.

If anyone noticed the pleasure he took from these activities, they didn’t mention it. It became his way of contributing to the group, just like Ueda and Kiseop drilled for water and Eli and Soohyun took care of the carpentry. The metal scraps had dried out enough to be molded into tools by the flame, which the two Koreans found great joy in using to build a surplus of items out of the excess of wood and stone.

None of them brought up the topic of the deceased. All without families, friends, lovers, pets – it would be pointless to grieve now, not when there was so much work to be done. On the fifth day, Kame and Dongho went exploring and found a single green leaf growing from a random spot in the expanse of dirt. Nakamaru hypothesized that the seeds of the previous vegetation were benefiting from the excess water in the ground, and went on to predict that all of the plants and trees that had previously existed would be reborn in due time.

This gave everyone hope. With plants came insects, and on day twenty-two Kevin’s sudden shriek alerted the whole group to a worm in the corner of their little shack. When they look closer, they see that it’s a silkworm, which has Koki’s eyes lighting up because it had already weaved a few cocoons and it wouldn’t be too difficult to mold a needle for him to sew.

The chance of survival is high, but Taguchi is still pessimistic. He keeps it to himself because it’s not Taguchi-like at all, although it’s the only way he can curb his instincts after close to three weeks without his medication. His body is still adjusting by passing out when the pressure gets to be too much and the others just assume he’s malnourished (they all are), but Taguchi doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to keep up this lie.

He accompanies Nakamaru on the next exploration, fully intending to confess about his condition and what could happen if he loses control, feeling nervous and shaky the whole time. He has a flash of causing harm but then Nakamaru smiles at him and the urge subsides, even if it’s only because Taguchi knows that Nakamaru is an essential member of their troop. Some of the others are dispensable, but Nakamaru is the most knowledgeable about science and the main brain of the new world they’re creating. So Taguchi must let him live.

They reach what looks to be a large box with an awning, newly erected, and the pair exchange a look of caution as they approach. A couple of the others had entertained the thought of there being other survivors, because they certainly couldn’t be the only ones, but every attempt at finding more people had ended up in more bodies to bury. Koki prayed for them while Ueda dug graves, and Taguchi swallowed his thoughts that they were wasting perfectly good food.

Right now, his fists are digging into his hands enough to break the skin at the realization that they may have to share their resources with yet another person. Nakamaru just looks scared, and for good reason since _anything_ could be inside that box. In this instance, Taguchi feels that his predatory instincts are welcome.

Then they hear the voice. A beautiful melody, soft and soothing like it’s always been, singing a song that doesn’t make sense but seems to be about fish, and Nakamaru chokes back his air at the same time Taguchi whispers, “Jin?”

The song stops and a flap in the door lowers, displaying narrowly cut eyes. “Oh my fucking god.”

It’s a reunion worthy of several bottles of liquor, but Taguchi thinks that given the circumstances, it’s okay to cry.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realizes that it’s Christmas morning.

*

“It was beautiful,” Jin tells them, his voice raspy. “The sun shone in the middle of the night, lit up the world, and sucked up most of the water, upsetting the balance.”

“Solar flare?” Nakamaru guesses. “If it hit the other side of the earth first, we’d just get the extreme heat effects.”

“Yeah, America is probably fried,” Jin replies, frowning. “Northern countries like Europe and Russia would be frozen over from the polar ice caps melting.”

“When did you get so smart?” Kame demands, but he’s staring at Jin like he still doesn’t believe he’s real.

Jin just laughs. “I got interested in this stuff when I was writing one of my songs. It was going to happen eventually, you know. The end of the world in 2012 and all.”

“Yeah, but we weren’t supposed to _live through it_ ,” Koki hisses through his teeth.

Jin shrugs. “It is what it is. I’m really glad you guys found me, though. Three weeks is a long time to live off of fish and talk to yourself.”

“How did you survive?” Ueda asks in amazement. “We were underground, and when we came up, everyone was dead.”

“I’m actually not sure,” Jin replies sheepishly. “We’d gotten drunk the night before, and when I woke up, the whole building was in shambles around me and my scuba mask was on my face.”

Nobody in KAT-TUN has to ask who the other half of “we” is, and the Koreans seem to sense that it’s a question that shouldn’t be voiced. They’d immediately taken a liking to Jin, a few of them speaking to him in English since he didn’t know any Korean. Jin had also brought with him a surplus of fish, along with a few reservoirs of water that had somehow avoided evaporation.

Taguchi keeps his eyes on the fire because it’s calming, welcoming the horrible thoughts that invade his mind instead of acting upon them. They’re sporadic, like a quick snap of a neck here and there, and in the blink of an eye he feels normal again, at least as normal as he can be without the additional mood enhancers his medication provided.

He feels a lot better now that Jin is with them, even if it seems like Jin has forgotten all about what happened ten years ago when Taguchi forgot to bring his medicine on tour with KinKi Kids. They’d been rooming together and Jin got the brunt of Taguchi’s withdrawal, which was much less controlled and much more disastrous than it was this time, accelerated by the fact that the two of them didn’t really get along back then. Jin also had a bad reputation with the senpai and probably wouldn’t have been believed even if he did run and tell someone.

Taguchi still remembers thrashing in pure rage on the hotel bed, wrapped tightly in the sheets that served as a straitjacket while Jin locked himself in the bathroom and cried on the phone to his mother. His mother called Taguchi’s mother, who took the next plane to where they were and slipped the prescription bottle to Jin undetected. Taguchi will never forget the look in Jin’s eyes as he was given the pill, followed by a shaky bottle of water, and left alone for a few minutes.

They never spoke of it again. Taguchi knew that his mother had explained to Jin what was wrong with him, possibly grateful that _someone_ in KAT-TUN knew about it in case he were ever irresponsible again. He certainly doesn’t think he’d been irresponsible _this_ time, even if he normally carries an emergency stash in his bag and just hadn’t gotten around to replacing it yet.

It doesn’t matter, anyway, since it would have run out eventually and there aren’t exactly any pharmacies around to refill it. If anything, Jin knowing about his condition is the _worst_ thing that could happen in this situation, because the most logical thing to do to a threat to your species is get rid of it.

They’ve already lost so many others – it wouldn’t be hard to add another name to that list.

“Suffocation?” Xander says, calling Taguchi’s attention back to the conversation floating around him. “Like drowning just by breathing?”

“That’s what makes the most sense,” Nakamaru tells him. “There was so much moisture in the air that it either flooded the lungs or didn’t provide enough oxygen to get to the brain. Additionally, the excess of water damaged the foundations of buildings, rusted the metal, and turned the ground into quicksand.”

Knowing how the world had ended doesn’t seem to make anything easier, but it gives them something to talk about that doesn’t involve mourning the past or their dim future. Taguchi starts to feel uneasy, as he often does when he thinks about how helpless and trapped he is right now, and excuses himself to go hunting.

“I don’t think there’s anything left to hunt,” Kevin says sadly, but all Taguchi hears is suspicion.

“I’ll go with you,” Jin volunteers, and Taguchi makes the mistake of meeting his eyes.

All it takes is a strong grip on his arm to tell Taguchi that yes, Jin remembers _everything_.

*

“How long has it been?” Jin asks calmly, like he’s asking Taguchi how long it’s been since it last rained or he last got laid.

“Since the morning of,” Taguchi replies, teeth clenching. His fists are balled again and Jin has to feel the tension in his arm.

Jin doesn’t say anything right away, and when Taguchi turns to look at him, he appears confused. “How do you hunt if there are no living creatures?”

“They don’t care where it comes from,” Taguchi tells him. “I usually just dig until I find something that serves the purpose.”

“And that helps?” Jin asks.

Taguchi nods. “It’s kept me contained so far.”

“It’s good that you can control it as an adult,” Jin says. “Does anyone else know?”

“No,” Taguchi admits.

“Stupid.”

He deserves it, feeling guilty instead of angry. “I know.”

“Go ahead,” Jin says. “Let it out.”

Taguchi glares at a particular spot on the ground, then attacks. It’s feral how he claws at the ground, grunting like an animal as he unapologetically tears up the earth until he hits stiff flesh. If he were in his right mind, he’d be a little embarrassed at behaving like this in front of someone else, but right now his only focus is on _destruction_ and he just hopes that Jin turns away before he starts in on the dismemberment.

At least this one is an animal. What the others don’t know won’t hurt them, but humans are much easier to unearth.

Jin stands quietly while Taguchi works, remaining still through every bite, twist, and snap. Whatever this is has fur and skinning is in no way enjoyable – another reason he doesn’t usually bother with animals – and by the time he’s done, he doesn’t feel any better than when he first started.

Ordinarily he’d be able to counter it with another hunt, but his savage instincts are very aware that there is a beautiful _living_ creature that would be much more satisfying to pull apart.

The next thing he knows, he’s being pushed face down on the ground, his hands yanked behind his back. It hurts and he screams, but they’re far enough away from the others for any noise to die in the saturated air and he sinks into the dirt a bit when Jin’s weight drops down on his ass.

“Stop it,” Jin hisses, sounding much closer than he should. “You’re better than this, Taguchi.”

Taguchi makes this roaring noise of discontent and struggles with all of his strength, straining his wrists to scratch against anything he can, his body freezing when he grabs a handful of denim that hardens in his hand.

The breath that Jin lets out in his ear is anything but fearful, his grip on Taguchi’s wrists tightening as his body rocks into the touch. “There’s an idea,” he whispers in this voice that goes right down Taguchi’s spine. “Do you think this will help?”

Already his mind is clearing, his rage channeling into arousal as his erection grinds into the ground. “Jin,” he growls, twisting even more to get free and attack in a different way.

“That’s better,” Jin murmurs, dragging his lips along the back of Taguchi’s neck. “As long as you know who I am, you’re okay.”

“Jin,” Taguchi says again. His blood is racing with an urgency much like before, only now he wants to fuck Jin into the ground instead of taking his life. “Jin, let me go.”

“Wait a second,” Jin says in a rush, shifting his weight to his shoulders as he leans up and rustles around behind Taguchi one-handed.

Through the haze of his distorted mind, Taguchi realizes that Jin’s unfastening his pants and shoving them down, which has him fighting even more to break free and whining when he’s denied.

“Just a little longer,” Jin gasps, followed by a deep moan that leaves no doubt as to what he’s doing to himself. “You don’t want to hurt me, right?”

Taguchi shakes his head, hair flying everywhere, but he knows he’s lying. If Jin let him go, he’d flip them over and ram his cock inside with no preparation. He may have his conscience right now, but his actions are still under primal control.

Jin’s noises seem to stabilize him, though, something which Jin quickly figures out and positions his mouth right on Taguchi’s ear so even the smallest hitch in his breath can be heard. Jin jerks on top of him and Taguchi shudders at the thought of Jin’s fingers deep inside himself, stretching his body open for Taguchi to get out his involuntary aggression.

“Good,” Jin chokes out, then fumbles with the button of Taguchi’s pants until he can shove his hand inside. A tube hits Taguchi on the back and he almost rolls his eyes at the thought of Jin bringing lube with him into the new world, but then there are fingers around his cock and said lube is making it easier for him to push through them.

“Ji~in,” Taguchi whines.

“I’m going to let you go now,” Jin says. “Please don’t hurt me.”

Then Taguchi’s wrists are freed and instantly their positions are reversed, Jin’s hands breaking his fall as Taguchi grabs him by the hips and pushes inside him. Despite the preparation, it’s so tight and so good that Taguchi’s instincts are pleased upon entry, waiting for Jin’s body to get used to him before pulling back enough to thrust back in.

He listens for Jin’s voice, wanting to hear it in that husky tone again, his own mind returning full force now that his cravings are being satisfied. He leans down to wrap his arms around Jin’s waist and mumble “I’m sorry” into his back as they both bounce with the force of his efforts.

Jin _laughs_ , a simple sound that is enough to make Taguchi feel better about everything, slowing his rhythm now that he’s in complete control of himself. He considers asking Jin if he wants to stop, but then he lowers his hand to make contact with something rock-hard that has Jin whimpering and pushing back against him to take him in deeper.

Now he’s losing his mind for a different reason, his fingers tightening as he strokes Jin and feels the reaction around his cock. Jin makes a beautiful noise that Taguchi echoes, the two of them rocking together and getting louder until Jin lets out a shrill cry and pulses in Taguchi’s hand. Taguchi is right behind him, pulling out at the last second to come on the ground and crash on the other side of where Jin’s still bent and shaking.

The night is silent all around them, the humidity in the air making it even harder to catch their breaths. “I’m sorry,” Taguchi wheezes.

Jin responds by leaning up on his elbows and scooting until he’s hovering over Taguchi. Even in the dark, Taguchi can see the softness in his eyes and feels even guiltier for taking advantage of him like that, despite the fact that he’s now entirely calm and couldn’t go ‘hunting’ even if a pack of wild bears came trampling toward them.

“If I’m going to do this for you,” Jin says sternly, “I won’t let you make a fool out of me.”

Taguchi doesn’t get what he’s saying until Jin leans down to kiss him. His arms automatically wrap around Jin’s neck and pull him closer, and already Taguchi feels like his medication is kicking in.

This mental stabilizer will talk back, but it’s a small price to pay in exchange of their lives.

And finally, it rains.

*

The new world is slow to take off, but they’ve got nothing but time. It’s easier to recreate things that they already know once existed, like the wheel and power, but much more difficult to brew medicines and breed living things. Kevin and Kibum find a pair of ducks one day about three months in, which the others take as a good sign.

Nobody mentions the old world, and nobody brings up the fact that this one has a lifespan. Also, nobody finds out about Taguchi’s condition, due to strategically-planned ‘medical treatments’ administered by Dr. Akanishi. The title isn’t that farfetched given that he’s the one who managed to grow mold into penicillin to save Kame’s life after a deep cut got infected.

They don’t talk about that, either.

Nakamaru and Ueda tend to the fields, spreading the seeds of the sporadically growing fruit and vegetable plants to hopefully harvest next year. Koki sews silk – and later, cotton – into clothing and blankets, and Taguchi keeps hunting in hopes that he’ll find something other than carcasses.

Xander and the other members of U-Kiss literally rebuild the city, using what’s left of the old one to start over again. They set up a plumbing system with water filtration and recycle warped, water-damaged materials into usable ones. After months of cold showers, the twelve survivors sit in their first hot bath in the new world and relax.

Even though it’s beginning to look more and more like an actual life, Taguchi can’t help but think that it’s all for nothing. Eventually they will grow old and die and everything they worked so hard to recreate will be left for no one.

Taguchi mentions this to Jin one night in late spring while they lay in their one-room house, the open window welcoming the night air because they haven’t invented air-conditioning yet.

Jin just laughs at him. “You really were only optimistic because of your medication.”

Taguchi shoves at him. “I’m just being real.”

“It’s okay,” Jin says, wrapping his arms around Taguchi despite the heat. “I like you better this way.”

A flash of violence takes over Taguchi’s mind, but all he has to do is grab for Jin to subside it.

The rest of them had learned the hard way to build their own houses _far_ away from those two.

*

By the time autumn comes around, the weather has returned to normal. They don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the world, or even the country since there’s no method of electronic communication, but the temperature gets cooler and leaves on the fast-growing trees start to turn colors.

It’s beautiful.

Expecting an actual winter, the survivors decide to take a month traveling as far as they can, just to be certain there aren’t any other human beings left on this earth with them. Taguchi thinks that they’re all secretly hoping to run into a harem of females, except maybe himself and Jin.

And Kibum and Kevin, judging from the way they walk with their hands in each other’s back pockets.

The journey is cathartic, quiet except for necessary conversation. Aside from the endless walking, it’s comfortable and even Taguchi finds hope at how nature seems to be growing with them each step of the way.

If anyone finds it odd that Jin sporadically pulls Taguchi a good distance away for an hour at a time, they don’t voice it.

When they see civilization in the horizon, they think it’s a mirage. At least, the level-headed members of KAT-TUN do, while all of the Koreans run as fast as they can towards the little village. As they get closer, even Taguchi can see that it’s real, his nerves on edge from something other than his condition as they approach the other survivors.

Taguchi bursts out laughing at the irony when he sees the Korean girls smacking the members of U-Kiss who are interested, clearly recognizing the words “I wouldn’t have sex with you if you were the last man on earth!”

“What are the odds?” Jin says under his breath. “The only females in the new world are fucking KARA.”

“They’re not the only ones,” a soft voice speaks up from next to them, and Taguchi swivels his head to see Mizukawa Asami standing to the side with an unimpressed look on her face. “What’s ironic is that I was in a drama about this, and that’s the only reason those bitches are still alive.”

“Are there others?” Kame asks.

Asami shakes her head. “None that made it this far. Those girls are ruthless and killed anyone who threatened their survival, including the few men who were in the underground club with us when the world ended.” She sighs. “They don’t understand that we need a _man_ to carry on the human race.”

There’s an awkward pause, then Asami seems to realize what she just said and looks sheepish. Jin pulls Taguchi to the side, and after exchanging a conspiratorial look, Kame and Ueda both clap Nakamaru on the shoulder and shove him forward.

“Hey, wait-” Nakamaru starts, but Asami is already lacing their hands together.

“Smartest kid in the _world_ ,” Kame mutters.

Nine months later, they name their chubby baby girl Mirai.


End file.
